Of NetVocates and New Coke

The whole NetVocates meme that I noted for myself about a week ago (Trolling for Dollars) is starting to spread since Cybersoc.com first outed them. Now dozens of weblogs have started rifling through their referral stats and writing about what they've found, and even DailyKos put up a blurb on the subject yesterday. Some have taken to calling it "astrospamming" in a kind of permutation of the term "astroturfing" that was used to describe fake "grass-roots" support groups which acted as proponents of corporate agendas. And as you could guess this is already threatening to generate a kind of witch-hunt mentality on discussion boards and weblogs everywhere.

But whatever tempest in a teapot might erupt from all this, it did occur to me that there's a fairly time-honored and straightforward way to combat this type of thing without actually dredging-up the whole discussion about what constitutes trolling vs. open debate, and without castigating every poster who happens to question aloud how "perhaps a tightly regulated internet might actually be a good thing"....

Affected and/or angry bloggers should just go after the clients of NetVocates directly. After all, complaining and bad-mouthing is practically the raison d'etre for the weblog community. So it might be a practical tactic to try to identify one or more of NetVocates' clients, and then launch an honest inquiry into some of the upsetting issues those firms might be concerned enough about to warrant such fervent desires to "control" any "unexpected" eventualities as might happen at the weblog level.

For instance, Anonymousblogger uses Site Meter to monitor his webtraffic, and was able to retrieve a direct URL to the NetVocates page which accessed his site (see comments section to Anonymousbloggers post here for details). That's how he discovered that some of the hits were targeted to a post he wrote regarding the AMA's proposition of a so-called "fat tax" on soft drink and fast-food manufacturers. And more specifically, "Coke" came up as a search term, which might indicate Coca-Cola was their client for the particular data run (perhaps that isn't the case, but I've been told that in battle we should expect a certain amount of "collateral damage"). So let me tell you a little story about Coke.

Now I love brown sugar water as much as the rest of the world, but...well actually that's a lie, I don't really like it that much. Not anymore anyway.

You see about 10 years ago or so I was in Playa del Carmen down in Southern Mexico and I went to a little tienda and bought a bottle of Coke. I'm normally a pretty strict water/beer drinker but this was back when Playa del Carmen was little more than a hidden haven for the beach bums of the world and there were no big resorts or theme restaurants like they've covered the place with now, and there was no water-treatment either. So Coke sounded good.

But even more than that it tasted good. Really good. Strangely familiarly good, like I remembered it tasting when I was a kid. I chalked it up to the magic of Mexico and didn't think too much about it until about 6 months later when this buddy of mine (that I'd gone to Playa with) mentioned a business article he'd run across that said Coca-Cola's Mexican bottlers were going to switch to high-fructose corn syrup in their formulas, instead of pure cane sugar like they had been using.

Suddenly it clicked. That's why Coke sucks anymore, because it isn't the same as it used to be. And though I've done no research I have absolutely no doubt that the change-over occurred when Coke introduced the whole "New Coke" debacle. It never made sense for Coca-Cola to change a time-proven winning formula, and then to do it with such a patent loser as New Coke was. The move flew in the very face of billion-dollar corporatic sophistry. But it actually made total sense if the whole point was to flush the taste of real Coke off the minds (and shelves) of the American public. Then when "Classic" Coke was ushered back in amidst great fanfare, hardly a soul would notice that it tasted morbidly "different" from what they had drunk before, because they'd have no reference anymore to compare it to. If Coke had changed the formula in mid-stream however, people would have been returning the tepid new drink in droves, complaining that it was "tainted" or spoiled or whatever...

Now there are all sorts of reasons why Coca-Cola was driven to degrade their timeless product with manufactured sweeteners, but the point of this whole monologue is that I really don't have much of an opinion on a "fat tax" but I do have an opinion on Coke. And that is that I don't drink it anymore unless I have no other choice. And the same goes for the rest of Coca-Cola's product line, and the rest of the unnatural soft drinks industry as well.

So to segue back to task, I can't help but think of the theory that says "the observation of a process actually changes the process being observed". And so, while the lengthy monologue above probably won't serve one iota in threatening Coca-Cola's North American profits--and it most certainly isn't going to bring back any of the dozens of Columbian union organizers that the company is alleged to have had tortured and killed by death squads--nevertheless I wrote and posted it solely because NetVocates paid what I felt was a suspicious visit to my website one day....

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

But as a counter-point, let's look at the bright side of NetVocates as well: they pay people to surf the web!

Does that sound like your idea of a dream job? If so I'd be curious to hear from any of you underemployed websurfers out there who have the skills and the ethics needed to apply for a job with NetVocates.

Just don't tell 'em Deconsumption sent you...

Comments

[UncleBeal]

There is an industry of "net advocacy" - read "spin" and it is frankly irritating. But I find it almost cynical that people have been reduced to numbers crunched for marketing purposes. I won't spam you by posting a load of links here, but you can find more info in my latest post 6/15/06.

Great post! I've had the same theory about Coca-Cola. Nevertheless, all soft-drinks are absolute garbage, to be avoided at all costs.

Why? The poison that is High Fructose Corn Syrup is the biggest single contributor to obesity in the U.S. of A., and is found in one out of four products in the grocery store. It raises your blood sugar level and is addictive. Not to mention it is all GMO. Combine it with artificial sweetners and you've got a toxic "Pause That Refreshes".

Make no mistake. The Coca Cola Company IS the U.S. govt.

NetVocates corporate acronym proudly spells it all out:
Blog Intelligence and Advocacy Service (BIAS)

[Loveandlight]

I remember getting a Pepsi in a can from a vending machine where I was going to school in 1988. I tasted it and I was like, "What the HELL??!!" It sweetness was a sickly, tainted sweetness, for lack of a better description. Either that was when Pepsi made the switch to corn syrup, or I only noticed it then because I had just quit smoking and my taste buds were coming back.

Interesting article on how Coca Cola sucks the life out of the sustinence and livelihood of local farmers in India:

http://warprofiteers.com/article.php?id=7728

"India: Coke Adds Life?

Impoverished Farmers are Fighting to Stop Drinks Giant "Destroying Livelihoods""